NCAA Championship Attendance Figures Flatten

updated 05.23.2014 at 6:51 p.m.

Despite efforts by the NCAA and the Baltimore Ravens to spike
ticket sales for the college men's lacrosse championship weekend,
attendance figures to be flat versus last year, according to event
officials.

As of Friday morning, about 70,000 tickets had been sold for the
three-day event at Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium, which with
walk-up sales would put it on pace to match last year's 79,179 in
Philadelphia. It's a far cry from the record 123,225 fans that
flocked to Baltimore in 2007. Attendance has declined every year
since.

Ticket sales for Saturday's Division I semifinals, typically the
biggest draw of the weekend, had reached 27,500 by the end of the
day, said Jody Martin, marketing and ticket sales manager.

The championship weekend will return to Philadelphia in 2015 and
2016, after which the NCAA has not determined a location for
lacrosse's marquee event. The NCAA has said it would consider
bringing the event back to a college campus for the first time
since 2002, when it was held at Rutgers, or making tickets more
affordable.

The cheapest full-weekend tickets this year are $79. Parking
costs an additional $55. The Ravens and NCAA opened single-game
ticket sales in mid-March, about a month earlier than in previous
years.

"I'm not burying my head in the sand," Anthony Holman, the
NCAA's associate director for championships and alliances, told
The Sun. "We want to get more folks here. ... But you
can't look at the attendance alone and say it means the
championship and the sport haven't been successful."

In the same article, Steve Stenersen, the president and CEO of
US Lacrosse, attributed declining attendance figures to "a little
bit of a market correction."